


A Familiar Darkness

by FSTP



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Something that Looks Like a Relationship, Explicit Language, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24444958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FSTP/pseuds/FSTP
Summary: The newest killer in the fog makes a statement the Trapper can’t ignore, and nothing gets between him and instant, violent retribution.Over time, and multiple murder attempts, things between them start to soften.
Relationships: Anna | The Huntress/Evan MacMillan | The Trapper
Comments: 9
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

Things didn’t change much in the fog, which made the few instances they _did_ stand out that much more. 

Evan set traps all over the estate. It was what he did. It was his name. _The Trapper,_ or so all the scrambling rats called him after one too many missteps in the shadows. He set them to keep his territory protected, to keep the inquisitive and lost and maybe even dangerous from getting anywhere near what was rightfully _his_. There wasn’t much to defend it from, he knew, but he set them all the same. He didn’t think about it much. 

Until he’d gone out to check them and there one was, snapped shut, dangling from one of the dying trees. One end had been jammed straight through a branch, leaving the iron jaws at eye level. There was no way he could have missed it. It was _meant_ to be seen. 

It was also devoid of any limbs or even blood, which made his blood boil. The whole setup looked like a taunt. Someone trying to say they were better than him. Could get around him. Weren’t afraid of his tools. Weren’t afraid of _him_. 

He’d grabbed the trap, moved to yank it down and discovered there actually was something lodged between the teeth, small enough that he’d missed it in the dark. There was no stench of blood. No hint that whoever had done this had left without a few fingers or toes, to his disappointment. He pulled the trap down and wrenched it open. The something caught in the teeth fluttered down into his other hand. 

In the moonlight filtering down between the dying leaves above, he saw a scrap of cloth. Dark. Probably hand-woven wool, or at least it felt like it between his fingers, but he’d be the first to point out that his line of work had never been very heavy on the finer materials. Leather and metal was about as far as his expertise went. 

It didn’t look familiar to him - dark and ripped without any bloodstains, it didn’t line up with anybody he knew in the fog. It was unusual. _Irritating_ , too. Someone had walked out of the fog onto his land, snapped the trap shut, and jammed it in a tree, with the sort of force he used on a regular basis. And there was no way they hadn’t noticed a piece of their own clothing getting stuck. This was deliberate. He couldn’t see it as anything other than mockery. 

He reset the trap a few feet away from its original resting place and went on checking the rest of them. 

The cloth he dropped, letting it disappear among the shadows and dying grass. It wasn’t important anymore. All it told him was that there was a stranger around, and they’d trespassed, and once those two facts had gotten fixed in his mind, the rage was all he needed to remind him of that.

  


* * *

  


The Entity worked in strange ways. There was probably a better word for it than that, but _strange_ was good enough for him. 

Time, for instance. It existed, but it didn’t. The moon moved, the clouds drifted by, but the sun never rose and nothing grew or died. Fires burned but never banked. The survivors, their terrified prey, suffered over and over again and learned from their mistakes but never kept their wounds. Things _happened_ , and stayed happened, but _when_ it was they happened never seemed very clear. 

It wasn’t something Evan thought about much. It had confused him early on, but eventually he’d learned to ignore it and get on with his work. There were better things to focus on that didn’t try to sink and melt through his metaphorical fingers when he thought about them. Like repairing the estate. Setting his traps. Getting ready for the next trial. 

Where it mattered was when new killers arrived. He knew the other killers, or at least knew _of_ them. Philip. Max. Carter, the goddamned lunatic. They met, sometimes, and it was clear who was there and who hadn’t been there before. He knew anyone unfamiliar was dragged in by the Entity the same as he’d been, but the moment they arrived, it was like they’d always been there. As if he’d just never noticed them before. And part of him thought: maybe he hadn’t. Maybe there were hundreds of them out there, hidden away, killing survivors he’d never seen, serving the Entity in secrecy. 

At the same time, he personally knew when a path through the fog suddenly opened up where it had always been solid and silent before. Whether they were really _new_ or there was just a new door to reach them with, it was all the same to him. The Entity took. They joined the rest of the monsters in the fog. 

He started to suspect that was the case with his mystery intruder. He found more traps snapped shut, most of them left on the ground, one or two tucked away in higher places, all of them a blatant show of some kind of superiority that made his fists clench. He knew the others he shared the Entity’s burden with - at least, as well as it was possible to know them. They didn’t seem like the types to taunt him. They were withdrawn, focused on their own hatred or misery. They wouldn’t be deliberate like this. 

Someone new wouldn’t know better, though. They’d see a trap as an invitation. Try to take their chance with an unfamiliar target. None of them were sane; why wouldn’t they take a shot as long as they had the free reign to do so, consequences be damned? 

He knew he’d have to make it clear trespassing on his land was unacceptable, and trying to sabotage his traps was almost as bad. The problem was that he had no idea who was doing it. There were no footprints in the dirt around the traps. No signs of anything being disturbed - anything _else_ , anyway. No smells he couldn’t place. No convenient bits of clothing torn off on a branch that might give away an identity. All he had was the memory of the piece caught in the first trap, and that hadn’t been any help. 

All that meant he was dealing with someone who could hide in the forest, use it as well as he’d ever been able to. _Not_ one of the others. Not even Philip. Invisible didn’t mean untrackable. 

Back in the world, his father had taught him too young how to prime and set a trap. How to make sure it was hidden, because even the stupidest animals wouldn’t step into iron when it was sitting directly in their path. He’d said _you have to be patient. If you don’t catch it the first time, you watch and wait. You learn how to be smarter than an animal, or else you’re not worth wasting time on. Find the right place for the trap. And then kill the damn thing before it breaks out and kills you._

It was probably the only time in his life Archie MacMillan had suggested patience for any reason. The lesson had stuck with Evan for years, lodged in the back of his skull as his mind deteriorated, and now it came back like a sneering whipcrack of fire. 

He wasn’t dealing with an animal. Or at least, he wasn’t dealing with something that had always _been_ an animal. There was an intellect at work here - one he needed to match and surpass. 

An intellect sane enough to know when to leave a mocking little _hint._

It enraged him. Nobody had the right to attack _him_. Not now, not ever - not in this place. 

And at the same time, whenever he thought about seeing the trap lodged so fully into the tree branch it took him two pulls to yank it free, he felt a sliver of curiosity, too.

  


* * *

  


It took another two traps - both closed, both empty - before he found what he was looking for. 

Between trials, his time was spent setting traps and waiting. He moved the traps on a regular basis out of long-ingrained habit, and because whoever he was dealing with would be able to get around traps in the same places easily. New spots, hidden better, dyed dark in shadows and left light where the moonlight hit. They were worn down and bloody enough that they didn’t gleam anymore. 

What caught his attention was movement. He _sensed_ it more than he saw it; the fog in the distance he could just see shifted unusually. Nobody walked out of it, but nothing could disturb the fog except another person. 

Evan stalked closer to where he saw the fog move, and waited in the shadows. Stealth was not his specialty, but he could do stillness when he had to. Lying in wait for the last survivor to drag themselves over the threshold of escape required that, and he used it now, watching everything, waiting for any hint to catch his eye again. 

And then he saw it - a shadow as tall as he was, moving from one tree to another and disappearing again. There was no sound. No footsteps. No crunch of dying grass or dead leaves, no clothing caught on the crumbling bark of a tree, no breathing. Overhead the leaves rustled as the wind passed through them, and in the distance he could hear the constant, ever-present rumbling of _something_ in the fog, a sound he’d grown so used to by now that he’d only notice it if it stopped. 

It flashed between the trees again and again, moving at strange angles, slowing after a while. He realized it was approaching one of his traps - getting closer with every movement, and somehow, it _knew_. As if the iron, so out of place in the almost-natural world, stood out as bright as blood to them. 

His fist curled tighter around the hilt of his cleaver, but for the moment he stayed put. He watched the space around his trap and waited. When he saw them approach it, start their little trick of snap-and-run, he’d move, lunging out from behind the tree to close the distance between them as fast as he could. If he was lucky, he’d startle them enough to close most of the space before they ran, and keep them running, frantic and pursued; if he wasn’t, they’d just vanish again. But at least they’d _know_ he’d found them. That alone might keep them from coming back. 

In the darkness, he saw a figure slip out from behind a tree. Moonlight coming through the leaves above lit up dirty whites and shades of leather. There was a splash of white near eye level - too white to be skin. Bone, maybe. He couldn’t tell from where he was. 

They leaned down, just slightly, and he rounded the tree abruptly, not bothering to hide any sounds. It didn’t matter now. He knew who he was dealing with, _they’d_ know who they were dealing with, and if they were smart, this would all end right now - 

There was a movement, and then something grazed his mask and smashed into a tree behind him. Evan stopped. He didn’t dare risk a glance back and give the side of his skull away as a target, but he knew a weapon when he heard one, and that was a warning shot. 

The intruder was frozen, too, one arm extended. As he took another step to rebalance himself, they straightened up and reached down to their waist to pull out another weapon. Left-handed, he noted, because the right hand was already occupied. 

Even at this distance he could see the silhouette of an axe. A big one. Designed for either cutting down trees or cutting down people, or maybe one and then the other. It probably took both hands to use effectively, but an axe was just about as deadly when used ineffectively, and it had a longer reach than his cleaver. 

In silence the two of them stared at each other. There wasn’t enough light for him to see what he was dealing with in detail, but the splash of white extended up away from the head. There were ears like a rabbit. A child’s mask, he thought. The contrast between that and the massive weapon was, very slightly, unsettling. And then his eyes dropped to where a patch of moonlight near the ground illuminated the edge of a jacket, or maybe a long cloak, and he saw a space where dark, bloodless cloth used to be, the edges ragged like they’d been _torn._

For him, the connection sealed the deal; this _was_ the bastard setting off his traps, not just an unlucky straggler trying the same thing at the wrong time. He took another step and dodged out of the way of another thrown weapon, and then the figured vanished. Turned, darted away into the trees, and all he could see as they went was the shadow of movement running back toward the fog. 

It wasn’t just stealth that wasn’t his forte; speed was up there, too. He took off after them, but by the time he’d crossed half the distance he knew they were gone. The fog at the edge of his territory was punctured, tendrils swirling and twisting over a space he couldn’t see into; in a matter of minutes it would be like nobody had ever been there. 

He slammed his cleaver into the nearest tree. After a moment, he pulled it out, turned to the forest and headed back toward the place he’d waited. 

The weapon he’d heard - a brief whistle as it blew by his face, slicing the air into invisible ribbons - was a hatchet, and it was still buried deep enough in the tree it’d hit it almost gave him trouble pulling it out. It was battered, old, the head mostly cleaned of bloodstains, the handle worn down to perfect smoothness by years of use. An axe might be used for all sorts of reasons, but a hatchet, a _throwing_ hatchet, only had one use. 

A brief search found the second one lying in the grass further away. He collected them both and headed back toward home. 

He had a hunt to plan.

  


* * *

  


Luring out animals was easy enough. Baiting a trap guaranteed that all but the most intelligent or skittish animals would eventually get caught, and since most animals lived one meal away from starvation finding the right kind of bait only depended on what he was hunting. 

Humans were almost as easy to lure as animals, but getting them to fall into a trap was a lot more difficult. They could think ahead, generally. Impulsive idiots might run at the bait, but most people knew when something looked too good to be true, or too obvious, and they stopped, thought, looked around, avoided what was supposed to be inevitable. 

Even the survivors, desperate as they were, could tell when they were being run into a trap half the time. They checked windows before they jumped, moved slowly around their injured friends just in case, paused before they got to work on a generator. After being hunted time and time again, they’d learned. 

And hunters learned, too, because over time hunting put your mind on the same level as the animals you were hunting. You learned to think like them so you could catch them. Of course, it was supposed to be brief, and anyone who thought like that for too long could end up in a bad way, but Evan hadn’t even liked hunting until he started losing his mind. He knew how to keep himself from sinking that low. 

The axes were the bait. Whoever he was dealing with _would_ come back for them. He’d already seen evidence of it, closed traps closer and closer to the center of his property. It would have been the same if someone had run off with one of his traps. Making a new one wouldn’t be difficult, but it was _his_ \- nobody was allowed to take what belonged to him. He figured it would be the same way for anyone else in the fog. 

In the shadows of the ironworks, he set his plan into motion. He tied the axes together and hung them from a low tree branch by a chain. Underneath them, he set a trap, careful to ensure it was hidden under filth and grass and fog, and chained it to two spikes he hammered as deep into the solid earth as he could manage. He didn’t believe for a moment that he’d manage to catch the bastard in it, but it would make getting the axes down that much more inconvenient. They’d either have to rip up and move the trap, or work around it, and either one would take time. 

Especially because he locked the chain with a padlock only he had the key to. He didn’t have the patience to wait forever for his target to show up, and the Entity was bound to call him into a trial at the worst possible time. He’d watch and wait when he could, and until then, those axes weren’t going anywhere. 

Axe marks showed up on the tree eventually; the branch itself was nearly cut through after a while, the hatchets hanging low enough he didn’t have to reach to grab them. But they didn’t vanish just yet. He moved them to another branch, shifted the trap, and kept the game going. 

Time passed, or didn’t pass, and after enough of it, Evan heard a sound that pulled him toward his trap. 

He stalked from the manor to the ironworks and slowed as he approached the tree. He could see a shadow already there, trying to cut the padlock away, or maybe just split the chains; he could see sparks. It was the sound of iron on iron that had drawn him. So familiar, and at that moment, so damning. 

It was just enough noise to mask his approach, or so he thought. Carefully, quietly, he made his way to the trees closest to the one where sparks rained down on the trap underneath. There wasn’t much moonlight; he’d made certain of that when the set everything up, both to hide the trap and to hide his own inevitable approach. It meant that, again, he couldn’t get a good look at who he was dealing with. 

That didn’t matter. Whoever they were, _what_ ever they were, they were going to suffer. 

He _could_ see the massive axe leaning by the tree, though, which meant that the intruder was mostly unarmed. Evan gave them a half a minute of frustration with the chain before storming out of the trees, with his cleaver at the ready. He’d expected surprise. He got a sudden, sharp look, and then they’d jumped away, grabbed the massive axe and swung it at him as his own blade came at them. 

The weapons crashed together hard enough to send both of them staggering back. Evan caught his balance easily and started to charge again, but stopped abruptly. 

His opponent had landed in the moonlight. He’d assumed he was dealing with a man, on the grounds that aside from Sally and the hag in the swamp all of the Entity’s chosen killers were men and that only a man could have had the strength to drive an axe three inches deep in solid wood. He’d been wrong. 

She was nearly as tall as he was, and nearly as broad at the shoulders, wearing unfamiliar clothing that included half a skirt over rough trousers. The rabbit mask only covered half her face, and he could see a grit jaw on the half that was visible underneath. She hefted the axe like it weighed nothing in hands that were as rough and blackened as his own. He thought he saw the glint of metal on one finger. 

Despite his rage, Evan hesitated. He’d never been taught not to hit women; something like that had never been a barrier for his father, and so it was a lesson that never got passed down to the son. Male or female, anyone who got in their way suffered for it. He had no problems hunting down any survivors who were women. They ran and fought and bled and died the same as the men. 

And yet … some part of him remembered learning from men who weren’t his father that hitting women wasn’t allowed, because they were weaker, frailer, couldn’t put up with the violence the way men could. That a man who struck a woman out of anger was somehow pathetic, because he was supposed to be better than that. To _know_ better than to lower himself to being violent against someone who couldn’t fight back. 

It conflicted with a lot of things he’d learned in the ensuing years, and until now, it had barely ever registered with him; he hadn’t had much to do with women after his mother’s death, since they weren’t allowed in the mines. Right now, it was conflicting with the fact that the woman in front of him was as bloodstained as he was and holding an axe that looked like it could cut him in half. 

His hesitation was an opening for her. She snarled and lunged, axe sweeping down toward his skull; he blocked it, cleaver scoring off the edge of the axe blade with a shower of sparks. She shifted her grip, flipped the axe, brought it back up. He just managed to avoid it opening his jaw with a sharp step back, and as the axehead came up above their heads he swung at her midsection. 

She leaped back. He followed. Their weapons met again and again, each of them trying to drive the other back. Neither one of them had the advantage. Her weapon was longer, but his was lighter. He had the advantage of being on his home turf, but she clearly knew how to fight in _any_ forest, ducking under branches without a glance as she moved backward. 

It was a stalemate, and they both knew it. Evan tried to force her around and back her into the trap he’d set, but she rushed to the side and put distance between them - enough that he couldn’t reach her with a lunge, but she could still cover the distance with a hatchet. He saw her hand drop to grab one out of her belt. 

He ducked behind a tree as she threw it; a second later he heard it hit with a solid _thunk_. A killing instinct drove him out, his hand reaching for the hatchet where it was stuck in the tree. He wasn’t good with ranged weapons, and he knew that hurling it back at her was as good as returning it, but she’d have to dodge, and - 

She yelled. His fingers barely brushed the handle of the hatchet before a second one nearly hit him in the face. 

Last time she’d missed deliberately. This time, it was an accident. The hatchet scored off his mask and vanished into the undergrowth, jerking him around and leaving him reeling. It hadn’t gone through the mask, but the pressure as it had tried to do so left a sting he knew would bruise. 

As his rattled brain pulled itself back in order he heard her charging at him. He had enough sense left to bring up his cleaver to block her again, and this time their weapons met, the hilt of his cleaver at the head of her axe, blades in each other’s faces. She bore down against him. He held himself up like an iron wall. 

This close, he could see blood smeared across her mouth, old scars along her face and jaw that vanished up under the mask. He thought he could see her eyes, too, pitch black and almost invisible under the shadow of the eyeholes. 

“Those are mine,” she snarled, her voice low and rough and feral. “Do not touch.” 

“Could tell you the same thing,” he grunted, shoving back; it was like trying to dislodge a boulder. 

“You left a trap in plain sight. What is there to hunt? It was an invitation.” 

“Anything that trespasses.” 

Her head tilted, but the pressure on his cleaver never let up. 

“Trespasses?” He thought he could hear a tinge of amusement in her voice, which only made him angrier. 

“This is _my land_.” Evan pushed, hard, and she slid back; he heard her hiss and try to get a better stance, but fresh anger gave him strength. “The ironworks. The mines. The tower. Everything around them.” His boots dug into the dirt as he forced her backward, toward the hanging hatchets and the trap he’d set. “You don’t belong here.” 

She said something under her breath he couldn’t understand - sounded like a swear - and tried to throw him off balance, but he was ready for her. 

“You want to cross me, you deal with the consequences.” His fingers curled harder around the dull side of the cleaver, pushing harder, trying to get her to slide right into the trap. 

“And you wish - to hunt me,” she managed through grit teeth. 

“‘Til you learn your place.” 

She laughed, short and sharp. He could feel her getting ready to shove, and braced himself. 

“Many men - have tried,” she said. “And all - have - failed!” 

Her axe fell. She ducked to the side. Evan, who had been expecting a thrust toward his face, overcompensated and stumbled forward and nearly hit the ground. He managed to keep himself up and turned, cleaver upraised, but she only grabbed the hatchet out of the tree and ran for the huge, looming building that was the ironworks. _Fleeing._

He chased after her. She darted inside, wound through the corridor that led to the opposite exit, vaulted over the massive pipe that had once fed the ever-melting iron into machines and assembly lines but now went nowhere and bolted into the darkness beyond. 

Evan stopped at the exit and watched the white of her blouse vanish between the trees. He knew he could probably catch her, but she had enough of a lead that she could pick him off with the hatchet before too long. He could only hope she’d be too focused on getting away to keep an eye out for traps, but her current track record didn’t promise much. 

For the moment he went back to his trap. On the way he found her other hatchet, the one that had almost split his mask along with the face underneath. Almost without thinking he reached up and felt a gouge where it’d hit. She’d thrown the damn thing impressively hard. 

He took it with him, along with the other two, but left the trap where it was. 

Some time later he went back to grab it and found it mangled, the jaws twisted almost beyond repair. The sight would have made him a lot angrier if he hadn’t known how furious she must have been to leave it like that.


	2. Chapter 2

The hatchets he kept almost as a trophy. A sign that while he might not be able to keep people off his property entirely, he could teach them a lesson. 

She tried to take them back. He was stalking the edges of the manor, near the treeline, and she ambushed him, nearly cutting him in half with one wide swing. Up until the moment she lunged out of the trees he hadn’t heard or felt a thing. It was sheer luck that he avoided the initial blow, and after that it was a bloodbath, the two of them going at it even more violently than they had before. 

She didn’t throw her hatchets this time; there was only one left in her belt that he could see, and he guessed she wasn’t interested in losing that one to him, too. Maybe she didn’t make hers the way he made his traps, he thought, but it was a very brief thought as her axe scythed by his face and took a chunk out of a tree. 

Both of them landed hits and drew blood. Her axe caught and tore one of the spikes stuck in him halfway down his arm, almost crippling him with a raw explosion of pain; he got a slash in at her midsection that only failed to gut her by a hair. They’d both heal in time, but the pain still lingered, and the scent of blood drove them both into a frenzy. Fury, bloodlust, agony - all mixed up like an electric poison, one that drove them both to try and do as much damage as possible with almost no consideration for themselves. 

This time the fight ended when he managed to get in close enough to trip her up, and her axe landed in one of his traps - the iron end, not the shaft, or else it probably would have broken. Not that she would have stopped for that, he’d bet. But the trap snapped shut on the head, and she had to put distance between them in order to get it out. 

He didn’t expect her to swing the entire thing at him, trap and all, to get herself that distance, but it worked. She slammed it down, tore the bent trap off one-handed, and looked up in time to see him bearing down on her. 

What he should have done was bring the blade down between her eyes. He would have done it before, the first time he’d caught her in action. Maybe it would have worked. Maybe she would have rammed her axe through his chest before he got there. 

What he _did_ was to stop his swing when it just barely touched the side of her face, above the mask. She froze, axe halfway to his gut; when she leaned to try and get away from it, he followed. 

“I told you,” he growled, fighting for breath against the pain. “You don’t belong here.” 

There was a hint of a smile on her face at that. He pressed the blade to the mask, and this time, she stayed still, shadowed eyes fixed on him. 

“I belong where I please,” she said, sounding as out of breath as he was. “In any forest. Where any hunter dares to set his traps.” 

“Attitude like that’s gonna get you killed.” 

“It hasn’t yet.” 

He felt a very slight pressure. He didn’t have to look down to know the very tip of her axe’s blade was pressed against the bottom of his ribcage, ready to ram through - but that wouldn’t be enough to save her from getting a cleaver through the skull. She had to know that. 

“You believe you own this land?” 

“I _know_ I own it.” He shoved the blade harder against her face. Not enough to cut through the mask and hurt, but to force her head aside, so she’d pay attention. “Got the deeds. Got the history.” 

“And the blood?” she prompted. There was no fear in her voice. Or annoyance, or frustration. Maybe an edge of anger, but he might have been hearing what he wanted to hear. 

“More,” Evan snarled, leaning in despite the pressure at his ribs, “than you can imagine.” 

She laughed at that, and he almost drove the cleaver down as hard as he could, but there was less mockery in the laughter than he expected. 

“I can imagine much,” she said. Her smile was wider now. “I have _shed_ much. As much as even _you_ can imagine.” 

Evan said nothing to that. He believed her; she wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t familiar with killing. Even Philip had taken lives, even if, by his own admission, he’d only known about one. 

“Return my hatchets,” she said - she _demanded._ Evan snorted. 

“No. You left them behind.” 

“They are mine.” 

“Not anymore.” 

Pain erupted in his chest. He shoved down; his blade bit through the mask with ease and into her face, but she jerked away before it could get through bone. It sliced through skin instead, cut across her lip and jaw, and she jerked her axe out of him as he slashed down hard and left another trailing, bloody mark on her arm. 

He grabbed at the wound in his chest. It had gone deep enough to be a problem - as much as anything was a problem _here_ \- but not deep enough to drop him. She, on the other hand, reached up and wiped at the blood dripping down her face like it barely bothered her. 

“I _will_ have them back,” she said. 

Evan didn’t respond, only snorted; anything he could have said would have sounded stupid or chilidish or, since he was starting to know how she thought, _inviting._ Inviting her to try and take his head off again while he couldn’t bring his blade up in time to stop her. She wiped ineffectively at the blood again and turned away, stalked back into the dark forest and vanished after a long few moments. 

This time, she left a trail of blood. 

He followed it against the stabbing pain to the wall of fog, and thought for longer than he should have about just where it went.  
  


* * *

  
There was no more point to setting a trap. He kept the hatchets in his workshop, and kept the workshop locked, which was unusual for him; normally nobody would be stupid enough to try and get in there. But she probably wouldn’t even hesitate if she found a way in; her anger, her sheer intent for violence, didn’t lead him to believe she had many limits. 

It was a lot like his own. A lot like so many of the Entity’s chosen, he told himself, but it still struck him a little more close to home. 

So she surprised him the next time by not trying to kill him right off the bat. He was outside the mine, pulling down rotting boards and replacing them with ones that weren’t as bad, when he heard footsteps. He glanced around and saw her walking toward him in the trees. He knew she could be silent, so this was a deliberate attempt to make sure he knew she was coming - to make sure he knew she was _intruding_ all over again. 

But she was holding her axe low, in one hand. Less of a threat. He watched her until she stopped, half-illuminated by the moonlight, and considered his options. 

This wasn’t an attack. At least, not yet. It could turn into one in a split second, when one or the other of them got mad enough to start it, but - even Evan could hold himself in check if he tried hard enough, and so long as she wasn’t going to actively come at him and try to cut him in half again, he thought he could manage himself. 

He still waited a few minutes before he approached her. He ripped out another board, pried a stuck nail free with bare fingers so burned and scarred they hardly bled at all anymore, and held up another board to make sure it was going to fit. Stupid, mindless work to keep him from having to deal with her until he had a plan. Her approaching him in apparent peace hadn’t been a path he’d expected her to take. 

Eventually he gave up, grabbed his cleaver and made his way over to her. She watched him in patient silence until they were just close enough that she’d have to really lunge to reach him with her axe. 

“What do you want?” he asked. 

“My hatchets,” she responded, a simple but insistent demand. Evan snorted. 

“No.” 

“They are _mine_.” 

“Not anymore,” he snapped, remembering the exact same conversation from their last encounter. 

She smiled, or at least the corners of her mouth turned up slightly. 

“If I took a trap, would it be mine?” Her tone was calm enough. Level enough. There was no mockery in it, no snide edge, but just the question made his fingers tighten around the cleaver. 

“Try it and you’ll find out.” 

“So no.” She tilted her head. Shadowed eyes stayed fixed on him, never leaving him for a second - not to look around at the area, not to judge any other potential threats. As if there was anything more dangerous around than him. “Then there is no difference. Return them.” 

“You left them behind trying to kill me. They’re mine. Trophies.” 

She laughed, short and sharp and not amused. 

“A trophy is _taken_. Ripped from the prey. You scavenged.” 

“Shouldn’t have left ‘em.” The way she said _scavenged_ sounded like an insult. He felt it burn under his skin. “As soon as you ran, they were mine.” 

“You surprised me,” she said with a shrug. “I had no time to collect them. You will return them. Or I will take your traps.” 

Despite the fury ripping down his nerves, Evan took a few seconds to think. _You surprised me_ was a strange way to put it. Maybe the first time, when he caught her off-guard sneaking onto his territory, but after that, how surprised could she have been? Or was it surprise at the fact that he could hold his own - that she didn’t kill him on the first swing? 

_That_ was insulting. And if she said it out loud, he’d kill her. 

“You try it, you’re a dead woman.” 

She laughed again, quieter now. Something that might have been genuine in another life. 

“You couldn’t.” She reached down to her belt and pulled the last hatchet free. Evan automatically raised his cleaver, but her grip stayed loose, the hatchet at a strange angle. “They are mine. My weapons. You will return them.” 

“No.” He watched her, refusing to move even if she aimed that last hatchet at his chest. “Shouldn’t have been careless.” 

“I came back for them. You had taken them.” 

“Shouldn’t have been careless,” he repeated, and saw the hand around her axe clench. 

“You _will_ return them, or I will take them back myself.” 

“You keep tryin’. Hasn’t happened yet.” 

Slowly, her eyes never leaving his mask, she slipped the hatchet back into her belt and hefted her axe in both hands. She still kept it low, but Evan shifted half a step back and lifted his cleaver to brace himself for a blow. 

It never came. Instead she watched him a few moments longer, then turned and stalked away through the trees. He watched her go for as long as he could, but she disappeared too soon, leaving him angry and annoyed and more thoughtful than he had been in a long while.  
  


* * *

  
Not long after he found scars in the door to his workshop. Big ones. Axe blows. The workshop door was old, heavy oak, banded and locked with iron; pieces of it had splintered, but even she hadn’t been able to get through the rock-hard planks layered six inches thick. She’d tried like hell, though. The lock was dented to the point of being unusable; he had to go through the other entrance in his house’s basement to get it in, and then had to rip the lock off to repair it. 

So she knew there was a door through the mine entrance. Fair enough. It wasn’t all that hidden. She probably suspected there was an entrance in the house, but so far she hadn’t gone so far as to break in. Maybe she didn’t have the courage yet; maybe she understood he would kill her in an instant if she tried something like that. Somehow he doubted it was respect for him or his property. 

He fixed the lock. The door fixed itself, a gift from the Entity. She made another attempt, this time knocking out a piece, but the rest of it held and without a key, she wasn’t getting in. This time it took longer for the door to repair itself, and on her third attempt he found bloody scratches on the _inside_ of the door around the lock, like she’d tried to pry it open with her bare hand. 

She kept away from him, but did too much damage to his property for him to put up with. And he couldn’t catch her doing it. The closest he came was storming down toward the mine when he heard her attacking the door and seeing her disappearing into the trees like she was as much a rabbit as her mask. Too fast to follow, and then gone, probably watching him from a safer place. 

He debated trying to find the path through the fog to her territory and retaliating, but decided against it. These weren’t random attacks; she had a purpose. Besides, she’d probably see it as an invitation to start trying to gut him again, and much as he liked a fight he didn’t like an ambush. 

The easiest way to end it all would be to just give the damn hatchets back, but that wasn’t an option. That would be giving up. Losing. No. She’d either take them back through sheer force of will, or he’d keep them for good. He hadn’t started this. 

He reinforced the workshop door, then set a trap outside it. After a moment of consideration, he found a rusted, broken hatchet of his own in a rotting box in the back of his workshop and set it on the plate in the center of the trap. Not so much an offering as a warning; the damn thing almost crumbled in his hands. Nobody had used it for a decade even before he was taken into the fog. It would fall apart the second she grabbed it. 

He came back to a sprung trap, a hole in his workshop door, and the pieces of the hatchet lying on the floor just through it. 

Message taken, he thought.  


* * *

  
At this point he was running out of ideas. Repairing the door over and over again was getting frustrating, and while she hadn’t crossed the line of breaking into his house to find another way in, he’d taken to reinforcing the other door anyway. Better not to take a chance on her catching him unprepared. 

Despite everything, he still couldn’t catch her. She was keeping her distance now. His traps went ignored. They were both single-minded, and they’d reached a stalemate, and, infuriatingly, Evan realized he needed outside input. 

“Just return them,” was Philip’s only suggestion, after he’d given a shortened explanation. “She will stay away. You will have no more problems.” 

“And let her think she won?” 

“Has she not?” 

Evan turned to look at him, cleaver in hand. Philip looked back. His expression hadn’t changed from its permanent flat, distant stare. 

“You have her weapons, but you can’t catch her. You can’t watch your workshop all the time. One day you will have a trial that goes too long. She will make her way in. You will have lost. Give them back now, and it’s a truce.” 

“A truce,” Evan spat. 

“Yes.” Philip’s head tilted a little too far. “Or you can continue to complain as if you have no other options.” 

“You never had to deal with shit like this before?” Evan demanded, trying to fight the urge to cut Philip’s head off his shoulders. They’d fought before. He’d probably win, but it would leave him where he started without anything to show for it. 

“I was not a petty man.” 

“This isn’t petty. She trespassed. Busted up _my_ tools. Left her own on my property and now she’s destroying it to get ‘em back. If she came running around here, breaking your shit, what would you do?” 

Philip shrugged. 

“I have nothing she can break.” He turned to look back out across the wrecking yard, where the shells of cars lay scattered like hollowed corpses. “Maybe you shouldn’t use weapons that are so easily destroyed.” 

He left in a fouler mood than he’d arrived in, partly because he knew what Philip was saying was at least close to the truth. Giving the hatchets back would be a simple, easy solution, but he’d be damned before he did it. 

His next stop was the Coldwind farm. The fields were empty, but he found who he was looking for in one of the barns. 

“Kill her,” Max growled, reaching into an open cow carcass and hauling back on a rib until it snapped off in his hand. 

“Been trying,” Evan said. “She tends to run.” 

“Before she runs.” He threw the rib aside and reached in to grab another. “Smash her skull. Cut her up. From behind.” 

For a few moments, Evan was silent, watching the brutality in front of him. Anger was his soul and center. He knew it, lived it, breathed it, let it drive him to cruelty normal people couldn’t even imagine. But Max lived in a red world of fury all his own, powered by something that came from a darker place than even the Entity could grant. Some godawful ancient animal hatred, one that made even _him_ keep his distance if he could help it. He didn’t know where it came from, and had never bothered to ask. No point in risking a chainsaw to the throat. 

“Harder to catch her than I thought. I’m not as fast as you.” 

Another rib bounced off the barn wall. 

“Get faster,” Max snarled, and reached into the carcass again. 

“That all?” 

The third rib came free with a _snap_ , and Max turned to Evan, his pulled, twisted face doing nothing to hide the burning hatred gleaming in his eyes. 

“What else. Is there?” 

Asking him had probably been a bad idea. Everything in him was about killing; he didn’t go in for much extra thought. Evan imagined a fight between him and the woman trying to break into his workshop. Her axes might find their mark and stop him in his tracks, or he might shrug them off and barrel toward her, chainsaw opening her from gut to throat. 

He tried the asylum, but Sally wasn’t any help. Sometimes she could manage to pull herself back to the present long enough to find her voice, but the second he saw her, it was clear this wasn’t one of those times. She was lost in the past, in the memories that had delivered her to the Entity. He didn’t know what they were but he could see the evidence of them in every inch of the burned-out hospital around him. So he let her drift past him, her face hidden behind stained and fading linen as it turned to fix on him for a few long seconds before she went too far away. 

But even if she’d been coherent, Evan guessed that she would have suggested the same thing as Philip. She wouldn’t understand his problem. It was too far beyond her. She’d find the simplest solution, and watch him refuse it with a judgment he could _feel_ through the canvas mask. 

The woman in the swamp probably wouldn’t be much help either - she wasn’t much for conversation, Philip had told him - which left him with only one other option: the Institute and its arrogant prick of an occupant. 

“It’s simple,” said Carter, his back to Evan as he put something complicated and metallic together. “Leave the door unlocked, but set up a more complex trap above it. Let her think you’re the careless rube we all assume you are and she’ll walk right in. It snaps shut, she’s taken care of, and you can do what you will.” 

Evan stared at him. It was hard to find a way to respond to Carter without instantly resorting to violence. 

“I can provide you with some more … _interesting_ applications for your traps,” he added in the silence that followed. 

“Pretty sure she won’t fall for that,” Evan said, his voice a lot more even than he thought it would be. 

“She’s an animal. They don’t pay attention to what’s above them, only what’s in front of them.” 

“Is she.” 

“I’ve watched her. She’s feral. She’d run on all fours if she didn’t have to carry that axe.” He laughed at his own unfunny joke, voice high and split and grating on Evan’s ears. “I’m surprised to hear she can talk.” 

There were a few metallic clicks, and then a jolt of electricity that cast strange shadows across the walls. Evan didn’t move, knowing that for as much as they hated each other, Carter wasn’t about to do anything as stupid as attacking him. His work, like Evan’s, was all about finding new ways to torture the survivors they hunted. Plus, Evan was stronger, and they both knew it. He’d demonstrated the fact in their one and only fight that ended with his cleaver buried in Carter’s lower jaw. 

“She can. She’s also got enough of a brain to pay attention to her surroundings. The ceiling’s not high enough she won’t see it.” 

“I could always hide in there and wait for her to - ” 

“No.” 

“Just an idea.” 

Carter reached into an open drawer and pulled out a handful of what looked like glass bulbs. Evan, uncomfortably out of place in a building too far outside his time for him to really understand, didn’t bother asking what he was doing. It would derail the conversation. Carter would never pass up a chance to show off how much smarter he was than the iron baron’s son. 

“Is the door metal?” 

“Iron banded. Lock’s metal.” 

“Electrify those parts, then. A small generator should be able to provide a sufficient shock as soon as she, or her axe, touches any part of it.” He glanced back, one eyebrow raised above a face permanently fixed in a staring, maddened grin. “You do have electricity at that little shack of yours, right?” 

“Not enough for that.” Normally, that would be a killing insult, but with Carter it was par the course. Evan held onto it for when he finally got the opportunity to split the man in half along the spine. 

“No? And the Entity won’t provide you with something so complex, I’m sure.” He turned back to his work. “I’m really your best bet, you know.” 

“I don’t want you in my house.” 

“So you’ve said.” The work paused briefly. “Or maybe you don’t want me getting anywhere near her?” 

Evan said nothing. 

“For someone who came looking for help in getting rid of her, you’ve been surprisingly resistant to anything I’ve suggested. Are you sure you aren’t getting fond of one of the only people to survive an encounter with you?” 

Evan still said nothing. Carter glanced back, as if making sure he was still there and hadn’t stormed off in a fit of rage. 

“I know you get a little particular about survivors who manage it.” He laughed again. “Or should I say, _obsessive?_ ” 

“You talk too much.” 

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes, Dr. Carter, you’re right, why didn’t I ever think of that before’, shall I?” 

“Your ideas won’t work. Use that education you think you have to figure something else out.” 

“They won’t work because you don’t want them to,” said Carter, apparently unfazed by the insult. “There’s hundreds of different traps you could make, and plenty of ways to rewire what electrical currents you have access to, and it only takes a few minutes to let me in. Any problems you think might arise are the result of your own resistance.” 

Evan pushed away from the wall and left. He heard Carter laughing at him as he stalked down the halls and back out into the gentle snowfall. He could have stayed and argued, could have asked for another idea or two, but the chances of any of that working out without him charging the bastard had been getting slim. 

Because he was on to something, the lunatic. Just like Philip, he’d pointed out things Evan didn’t want to hear. Instead of a path of least resistance, it had been his own fixations. People _weren’t_ supposed to survive an encounter with him, or at least not get away without being mauled half to death by either his blade or his traps. Survivors who managed it saw themselves on the wrong end of his rage the next time they were stuck in a trial with him. Other killers _had_ managed it, but rarely did they do much damage to him in return. 

She, on the other hand, had. And had gotten away, every time. And had taunted him. And enraged him. And now he was asking others for _help_ in getting rid of her. 

He didn’t stop walking until the fog opened up on the edge of his property, and even then, he only paused long enough to choke back his rage before storming toward the estate. He needed to focus. To _think_. Working on his traps would let him do that. 

For once the workshop door was undamaged when he checked it. He doubted she’d given up. More likely she was in a trial, or busy planning her next attack. Evan shoveled more fuel into his forge, pumped the bellows until the coals were blazing, dragged the box of scrap and broken traps over to his workbench, and got to work.


	3. Chapter 3

The first time his father had taken him hunting he’d been nine years old. His mother was dead by then, so there was nobody left to object to it. He’d been too small to handle the guns and too weak to set the traps and despite knowing there was no way a nine year old could have done any of that, his father made it clear that was a disappointment. Evan had hated it the whole time and hated it for years afterward. 

Later on, after things had _changed_ , hunting became a pleasure. Knowing where to set the traps, how to keep them hidden, when to shoot and where to land the bullet so the quarry was either too hurt to fight back or bled out as fast as possible - it was satisfying, fulfilling, and most of all, it made his father proud, or at least as close to proud as the old man ever got. For a while he was almost as good as his father. Eventually he surpassed him, though he knew better than to ever say that out loud. 

By the time the Entity took him, hunting was the only thing he really had left that would have been considered normal, and even then people had started to take issue with it. He wasn’t doing it for meat or fur or trophies or even as some kind of gentlemen’s pissing contest, he was doing it for the fun of it. Unnecessary. Brutal. _Cruel._ Only his father really understood, and by the end he wasn’t in any state to approve of his son’s tactics or not. Evan had hunted down the last of the miners who tried to get away, driven the rest into the mines, slaughtered anyone who didn’t get on the elevators before he got there and let the rest descend to what they thought was safety. Pit trap, he’d thought, and let the dynamite take care of things. 

In the fog, the others didn’t understand it like he did. They enjoyed hunting the survivors in their own ways. They all got something out of it, even if that was only the satisfaction of knowing they’d done their dark benefactor’s bidding, but none of them had hunted before, back in the world they came from. 

_She_ had. _She_ understood. That was beyond any doubt. Maybe not in the exact way he did, since she didn’t seem to care for traps, but she understood the hunt itself. How to put your mind in line with your prey’s. How to track, how to strike. In some ways she might have been better than him. He never saw her unless she wanted him to, and rarely saw where she went when she left. 

The fury was there, but so was a growing sense of something else. He put it down as curiosity, something he hadn’t felt in decades. He didn’t like it. It was crippling his fury even while it made him angrier. He should have killed her the first time they fought, or the second, or the third … 

… but he hadn’t. 

Carter’s mocking words rang through his skull. _Are you sure you aren’t getting **fond**?_ As if he was capable of anything like that. He didn’t let survivors limp to safety because they’d managed to free themselves from a hook. He didn’t leave that damn hatch open just in case one of them found it. He made certain they wound up dead one way or another, and if they managed to get away, they paid for it later. 

She’d survived multiple fights with him. She hadn’t taken her hatchets back, but he hadn’t stopped her from trying it, either. Or even caught her in the act. 

Evan slammed a broken trap down on his workbench with a snarl. 

He stared down at the twisted metal for a while, his mind roiling with fury and chaos, until he heard the distant telltale _snap_ of a trap going off. No scream, so probably nobody had gotten caught, but it was something he had to check on regardless. He grabbed his cleaver and stalked out of the workshop, almost forgetting to lock the door behind him as he went. 

It was her again. The trap was on the far edge of his property, meant to catch anyone stepping blindly out of the fog. She was crouched, trap in her hands, examining it closely; when she heard his approach she only nodded at him. Her axe was leaning against a tree close at hand, so he kept his distance when he stopped. 

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. His mood had only gotten worse in the time since he’d tried to get any kind of advice, and seeing her so casually handle his trap wasn’t improving matters. 

“Looking.” 

“Don’t have to touch it to look at it.” 

She gave him a slight smile and, to his surprise, set the trap down. But she didn’t let it go, instead choosing to get a hand around the spring and force it down, trying to get it open. 

It started to give. Another surprise. 

“These are - powerful traps,” she said with a grunt of effort, trying to force it open without touching the jaws. 

“I know. I made ‘em.” Evan watched as she almost managed to get the trap set one-handed. After a few more moments she gave up and let go; it snapped shut, metal jaws closing on nothing. 

“For bears?” 

“For anything.” 

“For the prey we hunt, they are … unnecessary, perhaps.” 

He snorted. 

“They’ve earned what they get. If they didn’t break ‘em, maybe I wouldn’t make the damn things so strong.” Evan glared down at her as she settled back on her heels, watching his trap. “Didn’t stop you from tearing one up.” 

“I was upset,” she said. “Anger grants strength. You would still have it if you had simply returned what you took.” She looked up at him, expression half-hidden behind her mask - enough that he couldn’t read it. “They break these?” 

“They take one or two apart in a trial if they can. One of ‘em taught the rest.” And one day, that sabotaging little shit was going to pay for it. “You earned what you got as much as they did.” 

“And so have you.” 

She smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. Evan watched her, waiting to see her go for the axe, but she stayed where she was. 

“That so.” He idly flicked his cleaver up, slicing into a nearby tree with the tip. “But you stopped tryin’ to kill me.” 

“You have been … difficult to kill.” Her smile quirked up a little. “Most men die easily. I can admire those that do not.” 

“Even while you’re destroying their property.” 

“Admire does not mean adore.” Under her mask, he thought he could see the gleam of her eyes, fixed on him like a wolf watching its prey. “Until you return what you have taken, I will keep coming.” 

“‘Til you cross a line and I gut you.” 

“What line is that?” 

Evan said nothing. He wouldn’t give her an invitation. Instead he leaned down, grabbed the trap and pried it open, stepping on the spring to lock it in place. She watched him do it, and when he was done her eyes met his. Her smile had a dangerous edge to it again. 

“Have you ever had a regret?” she asked, her voice cold. 

“No.” 

“Then I will give you one.” 

She stood, never taking her eyes off him, and reached for her axe. Evan stayed where he was. Didn’t take another step back, even to protect himself. She didn’t swing, didn’t lunge, just held it - meaningfully, in his opinion, a thumb drawing along the flat of the axehead. 

“Gonna take more than a couple broken doors to make me _regret_ anything,” he said. 

She smiled wide enough that he could see teeth. A sudden unbidden memory reminded him that only humans saw that as a friendly gesture; in animals, it was a threat. 

She turned away, stalked off, disappearing into the fog in moments. He watched her go, and then, on impulse, he followed her. 

There was no way to really see where the fog led. It was an endless, blinding mist, not pitch black but it may as well have been. The only thing any of them could use to travel was an innate sense granted to them by the Entity - one that would lead from one patch of cursed land to another. It always took time to figure out what they felt and how to tie that to where they were going, but once the connection had been made, it usually didn’t change. 

This time he had to follow her and the feeling of _unfamiliarity_. He could just barely see distant swirls in the fog that told him where she’d gone. They were his best lead. The fog clung to him, cold and prickling; he could hear muted sounds in the distance, roaring and rumbling, echoed voices, whispers, screams. A flash of music. The sound of a gunshot. Wind, roaring hard and heavy - 

That turned into a quieter noise high on the edge of hearing as he stepped out into another forest. 

This one was different from the one he knew too well. The trees were more tightly packed, almost to the point of claustrophobia. The grass underfoot was thicker, the dirt looser, the air so much colder. Heavy bushes and brambles made shadowy lumps in places, threats right up until he was close enough to see what they were. 

He knew the forest he’d grown up in had been old, but this place felt even older. Older, and wilder. 

Once, his father had taken him up north, over the border into the Canadian wilderness. There weren’t so many people up there, and the forests were supposed to be filled with wild animals that rarely ever dealt with humans. They’d spent a week hunting there, but only came back with a few trophies. They’d been unlucky, his father said. Went at a bad time. Had gotten bad information about where to go. 

Evan remembered feeling unwelcome in that forest, as if the iron and gunpowder and alien humanity had driven everything living into the shadows and it was all watching him, judging him, waiting for him to leave or to kill him where he stood. It was the same feeling he was getting now. 

She was nowhere to be seen. In the distance, he thought he could see a flicker of firelight. More cautiously than normal he followed the sight, picking up the smell of smoke as he went. Only two things caused that in a forest, and he didn’t see enough of it to think the whole place was on fire. 

Around him trees bore the telltale signs that he was in the right place. Axe marks. Hatchet wounds. Scars from target practice. Some in the same places, over and over again, dug so deep there was a danger the tree might drop half of itself onto the forest floor. She _was_ accurate with the damn things. Maybe too accurate. He dug a splinter out of one particularly jagged gash in a tree and crushed it between his fingers. It didn’t have a scent. 

Smoke and firelight eventually led him to a shack. And it _was_ a shack. Half of it was built into the ground. A firepit inside was glowing and smoking, and there were carcasses hanging from the low rafters. A glance told him some kind of deer or elk. Somehow he’d been expecting human. 

Out the other side, he could see a house. It took him a minute to realize what he was looking at. Trees and vines and bushes had overtaken it, made it part of the landscape, so at first he dismissed it as a pile of rubble, something old and collapsed and long since abandoned. But there was light in a high window, and once he saw that, he saw the rest of it: a lodge put together out of mostly logs and rope instead of just boards and nails. As much a part of the forest as it wasn’t. 

As he watched, the light in the window moved out of sight. She was inside. Here was a prime opportunity to get in there and attack her while she was distracted. Catch her off-guard like she’d done to him. Slaughter her in her own home and make it clear she didn’t have a rat’s chance in hell of getting her weapons back, or ever, ever outdoing him. Making her pay for her arrogance, just like he’d made everyone else pay. Made them all learn just how worthless they really were. 

After a few long minutes in the cold, whispering silence, Evan turned and made his way back to the barrier of the fog. 

She hadn’t broken into his house yet, after all.  


* * *

  
It didn’t take him long to realize that what he was feeling wasn’t curiosity. It was respect. 

Very little impressed him. Very little ever had. Philip had, once, after Evan had ducked the wrong way in a fight and the man hit him so hard he didn’t just crack his mask but the skull underneath it, too. The survivors had, once or twice, when they got away from him through sheer violence. And for as much as he wanted to rip them limb from limb for figuring out how to dismantle his traps, it was still _impressive_ that they’d figured it out and could do it in under a minute. 

Respect was even harder to wring out of him, and until the Entity’s brutal grip had snared him, the only person he’d ever respected was his father. Everyone else had been maggots. Animals. Worthless. 

But now, here … someone who could hunt like he could, who could get around him, who could hold her own in a fight and judge her own weaknesses - it was a first. He’d known too many men who tried to stand up to him, their ego inflated by arrogance, who bragged and showed off and then crumpled after a few blows to the face. They never learned, either, keeping up the bragging even after he’d put them in their place until he showed up to silence them for good. And then they begged. It was pathetic. 

She hadn’t really learned, but she _had_ adapted. The only strategy a hunter could take when facing something too strong or too smart for them to kill. She couldn’t beat him down, so she’d stopped trying. Now he was the one dealing with a problem, constantly having to dedicate time and resources to fixing what she’d damaged while she watched and waited in the shadows. 

It was worth respecting. Even if it did piss him off almost to the point of a frenzy. 

He’d decided against any of Carter’s ideas, even if they were the only useful ones. Instead he went back to his default tactics: more traps. He mixed up something new, a slick, oily sort of tar that turned the trap blacker than the wood ash ever had without dripping off or making the jaws stick when they closed, damped down the fire in his forge, and set the black traps in the shadows leading up to his workshop. He put others in the tall grass, hidden - but not so well hidden she couldn’t find them - to make her think he was trying to keep her from even getting close to the door. Once she got past those, she’d lose her caution. 

He was rewarded with blood. A blackened trap snapped shut, speckled bright red, and a trail leading back out into the forest. He lost it before it got him anywhere worthwhile but that he’d succeeded at all was enough for him. And she’d left it in one piece, too. Surprised at the pain - or maybe she’d picked up on his anger over losing traps and opted not to piss him off even more. 

Some of the tar came off when he cleaned it, so he refreshed it and set it again, this time a little further up the passage. Then he added a second one much closer to the door. She managed to avoid the first. The second nicked her again. He found the blood, though only after he found himself having to patch up the door again. She’d bent one of the iron bands out of shape in what he guessed was a sudden fury. 

But she still refused to be caught. He didn’t see her anymore. No glimpses out of the corner of his eye, no shadows where they shouldn’t have been. It put him on edge. It distracted him during trials, wondering if Philip’s words would suddenly be true - that he’d come back to a broken door and a ransacked workshop. 

Distraction made him reckless, rushing the trials, trying to gut the maggots and get back. They suffered under rapid blows, traps that dug in and bled them, sacrifices so hard he almost tore them off the hook - but others got past him, ran circles around him, rushed out the doors or dropped into hatches. They took advantage of the frustration they could see. Just a few at first, but then more and more. 

It would have been easy to blame her. Half of him did by default. But the other half still had a grip on something that resembled sanity, and Evan knew this was _his_ problem. One he had to deal with, or risk the Entity’s wrath. 

The begrudging respect meant he reconsidered his initial thought of waiting in his workshop until she showed up and taking her to pieces. The last time they’d been face to face, she hadn’t attacked, only talked. Maybe that was a place to start. It wasn’t his best skill, or even in his top five, but he doubted it was in hers, either. Someone so in tune with the wild wasn’t going to be much of a manipulator. 

Evan followed the same path as before to find his way to her forest. It was as dim and oppressive as before, the sky blocked by heavy foliage, the brambles catching at his clothes and skin. He ignored it all and followed the stink of woodsmoke until he found her house again. There was firelight in the lower windows, but not above. 

Maybe she wasn’t around. He could take a chance with that. Leave a warning instead of a conversation. But something told him differently. He wasn’t alone here. If he laid a hand on the door, she’d put her axe through it. He’d brought his cleaver - he wasn’t stupid - but letting her get the first blow in wouldn’t be a good idea. 

He glanced around until he saw what he needed, then raised a foot and brought it down deliberately on a fallen branch. It broke with a sharp, echoing _snap_. 

It took her five seconds to kick open the door, her axe in both hands. When she saw him it raised slightly, but she didn’t charge him. 

“You found this place?” she asked. Politely worded, but dangerous in tone, promising blood if she didn’t like his answer. 

“Followed you.” 

She stepped out from the doorway and approached him, but kept her distance. 

“It does not welcome strangers.” 

“Neither does my property. Didn’t stop you.” 

The corner of her mouth turned up in something like a smile. 

“Then you have come to attack.” 

“Not yet.” She tilted her head. “I’m done with you trying to break in. You’re not gettin’ them back. Make new ones.” He paused, every inch of the fury that powered him screaming against even the idea of what he said next. “You need iron for the axeheads, I can get it. But nothing else.” 

Now it was her turn to pause. Considering his offer? Or just shocked that he’d make one at all? It had taken him a while to come to terms with it himself. After all, giving her access to new weaponry just meant she might come after him again - but he could always take those, too. 

“Make new ones,” she echoed. “As if it is so simple.” 

“Where’d you get those, then?” 

“I took them from prey.” 

“So you’re a scavenger.” 

The sound of the wind in the trees overhead seemed louder in the sudden silence that followed his words. Her grip tightened, her shoulders tensed and the axe lifted. The tiny fragment of a smile he’d seen vanished in favor of bared teeth. 

“Taking from a kill is not _scavenging_ ,” she snarled. 

No, he thought, watching her anger grow, it’s called _looting_ when you steal from the dead. If she didn’t make the hatchets herself, then she took them off a dead man, and whether she killed him or not, theft was theft. 

The accusation grated on her, though. It was something to keep in mind. 

“Stealing, then.” 

“To take meat from a kill is no different. They are all prey.” 

Prey. Meat. Less than human. _Maggots._ Maybe she had a point. He was silent for a moment. 

“Doesn’t matter. Learn how to make ‘em yourself. You’ve got my offer. Best you’ll get.” 

Her fingers loosened and tightened around the axe. Evan watched her, waiting for her to lose control and lash out. At this distance, he’d be ready before she got close enough to land a blow. But she stayed where she was, shoulders hunched and jaw set, ready to kill but not quite willing to - yet. 

“Why offer at all?” she said, voice almost a hiss through clenched teeth. 

“To get you off my case.” 

“Death would be simpler.” 

He paused. The real answer was a lot more complicated, but bringing himself to say it out loud when he could barely acknowledge it to himself wasn’t going to happen. 

“You want that instead?” 

She snorted, something like a laugh and something like dismissal. The axe came down. Her stance shifted, no longer prepared to lunge and bring down a blade on his skull with enough force to cut it in half. 

“You could not do so.” 

“Keepin tryin’. You’ll learn otherwise.” 

In silence the two of them watched each other. Then, his offer made and his patience wearing thin, Evan turned around and strode away. He half-expected to hear her running after him, ready to start another fight, but all he heard was the wind above and the distant roaring from somewhere too far away to find. 

“Wait,” she said. He turned. 

The hatchet hit him in the chest. He felt it split his sternum as easily as the leather coveralls over it, felt the sudden eruption of pain in every inch of him. The force of it knocked him back, and with nothing nearby to grab, he staggered back, nearly falling. Then she was on him, axe in one hand, hitting him hard and knocking him over; he hit the ground with a choked sound of pain. 

She dropped on top of him, one knee on either side of him, her mask gleaming too white in the dark forest. With her free hand she caught his right wrist and pinned it to the ground, stopping him from running her through - at least until the shock had passed. She leaned down, mask coming dangerously close to his, her teeth still bared but now in something like a smirk. 

“You come here to make an _offer_ ,” she growled, “and expect to walk away?” 

Evan only snarled at her. The hatchet _hurt_. He could feel the blood welling up around the blade, pooling in his throat, making his lungs heave as he tried to breathe against the pain. 

“I should gut you.” She dropped her axe and wrapped her fingers around the hatchet, pressing down on it harder. Agony, sharp and hot and piercing, ripped through him like iron spikes; even with the Entity’s gifts muting the worst of it, he could still see flashes of light as his brain tried to black out against it. 

“Should be - grateful,” he choked out. Blood splattered the inside of his mask and ran down his jaw. The fingers of his free hand scrabbled in the dirt, wondering if he could find her axe before she realized what he was doing. “I don’t - play - nice.” 

“Yet you are.” She lightened her grip on the hatchet, which didn’t really do much to help the pain. “Why?” 

He couldn’t find the axe; it probably wouldn’t help him anyway. Instead he lashed out, grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the hatchet and forced it back. She leaned down in return, growling like something wild, trying to use her whole body to keep him from pulling the weapon out. 

“You’re - too hard - to catch.” Every word hurt, and Evan, a terse man at the best of times, wasn’t interested in sparing any extras. “Sick of - fixing - shit - ” A fresh spike of pain as he took a breath cut him off, but he kept going. Tried to ignore the pain, the glaring, godawful _weakness_. Death might not have been an option for any of them, but they sure as hell could suffer. “Ending this - _now._ ” 

“Give them back and it will be ended - ” 

He pushed back on her wrist. The hatchet slowly started to give way; blood poured out of the wound to fill the space left behind. She snarled and leaned down harder, but in sheer strength, he surpassed her. The grip around his other wrist tightened as her weight bore down on him. This close, he could almost see her eyes behind the mask. Dark, endlessly dark, with only a faint gleam to tell there was anything there. 

There was no more time - or room, or breath - for words. Evan made a guttural sound, almost a roar, and forced her back, making her take the hatchet with her or risk leaving it in his chest and losing that one, too. She dug her knees into the dirt, tried to stay where she was, but one final shove pushed her back, onto his legs, and freed up his right arm. He swung the cleaver. She rolled away in time, but now there was no way she could get back on him - and her axe was closer to him than to her. 

The two of them watched each other. The pain was almost crippling and the blood loss had him lightheaded, but the rage buoyed him up, kept him sitting, kept the blade between them. 

“Don’t - make me take it back.” Even without the hatchet in his chest, every breath hurt. 

“Why make such an offer when you could simply return what you took?” 

“Trophy’s a trophy,” he snapped, and spat out a mouthful of blood. “You should understand.” 

She crouched where he’d shoved her, bloody hatchet in her hand, giving him a look he couldn’t figure out. The anger was still there, but less than it had been seconds ago. Less the look of a wolf watching its prey and more one circling a trap, knowing what might come next and wondering if it could get the bait anyway. 

“It is a worthless offer to me,” she said after a long few moments. “But … ” 

She paused again. He saw her grit her jaw, shake her head as if trying to dislodge a thought. 

“Do not return here again without them. Or else you will not leave in one piece.” 

Evan snorted and shifted his hand to try and get some purchase to stand. His fingers grazed the long handle of her axe; he glanced down at it, then back up at her. Her eyes were fixed on the axe. And his hand. 

“Try it,” she growled. “See how far you go.” 

For two seconds he considered actually trying to take the axe. But it would be stupid, and petty, and mostly he knew he wouldn’t manage to get even to the edge of the forest before she tackled him and tore his throat open to get it back, and then he’d probably lose his cleaver in the process. Unlike her, he _did_ know how to make a new one, but it would be as bad as her tearing up his traps. It was _his_. Plus, it would give her something to bargain with. 

Instead Evan forced himself to his feet, trying not to wince against the pain as his slowly-healing chest ripped and strained against the use of any muscles. Blood splattered to the ground around him, pooling around his feet. He took a few cautious steps away, and she darted in to grab her axe. 

He watched her put away her hatchet without so much as flicking the blood off and start to turn back toward her house. An impulse suddenly surged up in him, and with most of his brain preoccupied by ignoring the pain, he didn’t have enough focus left to resist it. 

“You got a name?” he asked, just loud enough for her to hear. 

She paused and glanced back at him. Her expression was as unreadable as ever, and for a moment he thought she was going to ignore him. 

“Anna,” she said, and without another word stalked back into the overgrown mess of her home. He expected the door to slam, but she just closed it firmly, and a second later he heard the scrape of a lock. 

He took a few minutes to recover and let himself heal before making his way back to the fog. He thought he saw a light in one of the upper windows as he did so, but that might have been his brain still trying to process the blood loss he’d suffered.  
  


* * *

  
“So she didn’t kill you,” Philip said. There was no tone or inflection to his voice; it was just a flat statement. He rarely used any other tone. If he was going to judge, he came out and said it, a fact that Evan both despised and appreciated. 

“Could have cut me down when I tried to leave.” He leaned back against a nearby stack of crushed cars. “Or aimed the damn thing for my head first try.” 

“Maybe you impressed her.” Philip tapped his chin with his knuckles, staring out into the foggy wrecking yard. “Or surprised her by being stupid enough to walk into her territory and tell her what she didn’t want to hear.” 

Evan glared at him. 

“Stupid enough?” 

“Bold enough, then. Often there is little difference between the two.” He turned his head to look at Evan directly, white eyes gleaming in an otherwise expressionless face. “Why did you make that offer?” 

“To get her off my back.” 

“There’s no fundamental difference between giving back her old weapons or helping her make new ones.” 

“ _Fundamentals_ aren’t the problem.” 

“So it’s a matter of your ego?” 

“Don’t see why she didn’t take the shot,” Evan said, ignoring the jab. “Would have made a point.” 

“It wouldn’t have stopped you in the long run.” Philip, for all his faults, knew when let things lie. “Why didn’t you kill her?” 

“Too difficult.” 

“For you?” There was a suggestion of a raised brow on his face. “With all your strength? You had your hand on her weapons.” 

“She had an axe in my chest. Couldn’t exactly get her off me enough to do it.” 

“That’s an excuse.” 

Evan turned fully to glare at him, meeting the blank stare with a mostly-hidden scowl. 

“You sound like Carter.” 

“I don’t think you want to kill her.” Evan started to snap something, but Philip continued before he could get a word out. “You’ve had too many chances to do so and let them slip by you. If you really didn’t want this to continue, you would have returned the hatchets and gone your separate ways.” 

For a few seconds there was only the sound of crows, picking their way through the wrecking yard. 

“The hell does that mean?” he asked eventually. 

“You may have found kinship with her,” was the response, flat and dry. “Another hunter. Someone nearly as strong as you. I’d bet she feels the same,” he added, before Evan could say anything. “Or else she would have killed you already, too. More thoroughly.” He glanced down at the split in Evan’s coveralls, where the angry wound left by the hatchet was still healing. 

A lot of words fought to escape him then, each one more insulting than the last, but overriding all of them was a memory of derisive words coming back again: 

_Are you sure you aren’t getting fond of one of the only people to survive an encounter with you?_

He knew Philip didn’t mean for it to come off as mocking. He knew Philip couldn’t possibly have known what Carter said, and even if he did, to deliberately echo it. But what he knew and what he felt were just far enough apart that he felt the rage surge, make his fists and teeth clench. 

Evan left before he did anything stupid, slamming half a car out of the way as he went. 

“More right than I thought,” Philip said to himself, which fortunately for them both went unheard.


	4. Chapter 4

The problem now was that he realized Philip - and to a more annoying extent, Carter - were probably right. 

Respect was something he could begrudgingly come to grips with. She _was_ a damn good hunter, after all. Had dealt with him multiple times without dying. Had _hurt_ him without getting killed for her efforts. Kinship was harder. And fondness - 

When was the last time he’d been _fond_ of anybody? The thought stirred memories long since beaten into darkness by rage and bloodlust. He wanted to say never, but there had been a time - so long ago, so long _before_ \- when he’d known people who were almost friends. _Almost._ Before he’d learned what people were really like and what the world really was under the pretty glaze on the surface. 

His dealings with Philp were about as close as he’d ever gotten to something like acquaintanceship in the fog. Friendship was not something the Entity encouraged among its killers; positivity of any kind dulled the killing spirit. They only needed to get along well enough to avoid focusing on killing each other instead of the survivors. That meant mild politeness at best, and being at the breaking point of murder at worst. There was enough space in the fog that they could always ignore each other. 

Until now that hadn’t been a problem. He didn’t need to know any of the others as _friends_. They had their purpose, and so long as nobody got in his way, he wouldn’t get in theirs. 

The idea that he would be _fond_ of anybody was insulting. Infuriating. Frustrating beyond measure. 

It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been close to the truth. 

He tried to put it out of his mind. And to put _her_ out of his mind. But now the hatchets that had been a trophy reminded him of her every time he glanced at them. Before he’d only gotten the grim satisfaction of remembering her frustration and anger; now he kept seeing her as she turned back to give him her name, something he still wasn’t sure was a good idea to know. 

Trials were a reprieve now. He could focus on killing the little shits that thought they could outsmart him; the idea that she might break in and take back her stolen weapons was less enraging than it had been. As long as she didn’t gloat about it, maybe it was better if she pulled it off. That didn’t stop him from setting traps and fixing his door, but it still lingered, leaving him uncertain about exactly how he felt about everything. And _uncertainty_ wasn’t something he needed or wanted in his life. 

But the trials only came so often. The others took their turns. There was someone new around lately, too. Evan hadn’t met him, and he hadn’t gone out of his way to antagonize Evan the way _she_ had, but a few passing comments from Philip hadn’t been very positive. Some kind of circus freak, he’d heard. 

It left him with more time than he wanted to try and deal with a raging mixture of things he didn’t want to think about. 

He tried lessening some of it by finally, despite everything in him that hated the very idea of it, taking one of the hatchets and storming back to her forest. He flung it at her door, turned to leave and heard it hit and bounce off. It would have been better if the damn thing stuck in the door, but thrown weapons weren’t his specialty. He didn’t wait to see if she found it; either she was there and heard it, or she’d find it when she got back. 

It didn’t help. The other two were still lying on his workbench every time he got to work repairing a trap or working on a new coil or deadlier jaws. 

She tried, one more time, to get them back; he found his traps pulled aside, the lock on his door broken open, the boards on the door split. She would have gotten in if it hadn’t been for the second sliding lock on the other side. This time the Entity didn’t give him any help repairing things; the metal wasn’t a problem, but he’d have to find somewhere new to pull the boards from. 

He was at the mine, trying to judge which of the planks used to keep the shack above it upright was the least likely to disintegrate under an axe blow, when she approached him again. Both hatchets were in her belt, which felt to him like showing off. She didn’t speak for a while, keeping her distance while he tested the boards and ultimately gave up on finding something worthwhile, but once he turned to face her she closed the distance by a few feet. 

“You returned it.” Her fingers grazed the hatchet where it hung in her belt. 

“No shit.” 

“Why?” 

He let the question hang in the air, the answer too frustrating for him to deal with in the bloody rage of his own head, much less justify to someone else. She let him stew in silence, her axe hanging by her side. 

“Got tired of having ‘em around,” he said eventually. 

“Then return the rest.” He thought he saw the shadow of a smirk on her face. 

“No.” 

“You tired of three but not two?” 

It had been a stupid answer, but her turning it around on him made him snarl. 

“Consider it repayment for the one you put in my chest.” 

Now it was her turn to fall silent. The smirk was still there, but softer. He ignored it. 

“So if it happens again, I will receive the rest?” 

“Don’t push your luck.” 

She laughed. It was brief, and soft, but it was a laugh, and probably as close to genuine as he’d ever heard here. 

“Another time.” She started to close the distance between them again, axe trailing at her side; he didn’t move, but kept his grip on the cleaver as firm as ever. “Tell me your name.” 

“Why should I?” He knew why she wanted it. He’d gotten hers, and it would give her a name to the face - or at least the mask - that had made her life here a problem. 

“I will leave without another fight. You will not have another injury.” 

He _knew_ she was looking at the scar on his chest where it vanished under his clothes. It had stuck around. Sometimes scars did. More on him than on others, he’d always noticed, but until this one he hadn’t cared. Maybe it was a punishment for being distracted. Maybe it was just part of his own private little hell. 

“And you won’t?” 

“Yours have been much worse.” 

He swung the blade of his cleaver up and caught it in his other hand. The edge was a little dull. Didn’t make it any less dangerous or painful, but he’d have to sharpen it. Soon, he told himself, watching her stare at him with her own dangerously sharp axes so close at hand. 

“Evan,” he finally said. 

She tilted her head, light from the moon through the foliage above them casting strange shadows on her mask. 

“I thought you would refuse.” 

Evan shrugged. 

“It’s not a secret.” If he’d kept silent, she could have asked Philip, or Carter, or even Sally if she caught her at a good time. And it didn’t really matter on the whole. Here, half the time, they didn’t even go by names. “Better you know it than picking something yourself.” 

Now she smiled. Not quite a smirk, something a little more genuine, but still not entirely friendly. Amused, maybe. 

“It would not have been insulting.” She thought for a moment; he dug his fingers into the flat of his cleaver. “Медведь. Slow but dangerous. Perhaps too quick to rouse to anger.” 

Evan said nothing. He didn’t know what she’d said, but it sounded insulting to _him_. 

“What do they call you?” she asked. He almost asked her who _they_ meant, but half a second of thought answered that for him. 

“Trapper,” he said. She nodded. It was about as straightforward as things got around here. None of them ever questioned why the survivors picked the names they used, but some were easier to explain than others. “You?” 

“Huntress.” Her smile quirked up a little. “They are astute, are they not?” 

He snorted, let go of the blade and half-turned back to the mine entrance. Some of the boards looked a little more useful than they had minutes ago, before she’d arrived. 

“That’s one way to put it.” 

The mask blocked part of his peripheral vision, but he saw her watch him a few seconds longer before turning away herself. No final snipe, no final attack. She disappeared into the darkness of the forest, and, after a few long moments of silence, Evan got back to work.  
  


* * *

  
She watched him fix the new boards in place, laying them against the old ones and hammering the iron bands down. There wasn’t enough room to do it in the workshop, so he’d started it just outside the underground tunnel, and hadn’t paused or even said a word when she appeared out of nowhere and crouched nearby in a silence of her own. 

It would have been simple for her to nail him with a hatchet, stride past his struggling body and walk right into the workshop to take back her weapons. The fact that she hadn’t was bothering him. 

“You repair everything yourself?” she asked as he slotted another strip of iron over the aging wood. 

“Most of it.” He didn’t have to measure the length at this point. She’d taken down the door so often he knew it offhand. 

“And the rest?” 

“Rots.” Evan grabbed the hammer again. “Or gets fixed on its own. If I’m lucky.” 

She was silent while he fixed the iron in place. Once the noise had died away and he reached for the bolts, she picked up a stray sliver of metal that had come loose and turned it over in her fingers. 

“Strange gifts we receive,” she said, more to herself than to him. He ignored it and got to work fixing everything back in place. It was an old door, built to withstand time and damage. It had been brought here even when the workshop changed, _shifted_ , to allow him to make his tools. So far, she’d put it through the paces, and it had held up. It was worth repairing if the Entity wouldn’t help him. 

Fixing the bands in place. Fixing the hinges. Getting the lock back on. Through it all, she only turned the iron in her hand. 

“You’re not takin’ your shot,” he said eventually. 

“What would the challenge be in that?” She didn’t look over at him, or at least, she didn’t turn her head. 

“Would solve your problem.” 

“And then it would be you breaking down my door.” The sliver of metal in her fingers caught the moonlight, but the iron was too old and worn to shine. “I will wait for a better opportunity.” 

There wasn’t much of a better opportunity than _this_ , he thought, but if she wasn’t going to act on it he wouldn’t push her. It still dug into him. Wouldn’t he take a chance like this? 

Hadn’t he had one before, when he followed her back to her forest? 

“Your loss.” Evan wrenched the last piece in place and looked at her. “Why that mask?” 

It took her a few seconds to realize what he’d asked and turn to watch him instead of the shard of iron. 

“This one?” A hand came up to rest on the edge of it, where even at this distance he could see a hint of fading. Yellowing, but not like bone. More like paper. “To not frighten the little ones.” 

His silence asked the questions he wasn’t ready to put to the air. She smiled wistfully, looking out in the forest again. 

“Not them. It was for _my_ little ones. Lost. Afraid. I did not wish to frighten them more. It was a comfort to them.” 

That gave him new questions he could have asked. Comments he could have made. But there was a real softness to her voice, like there had been something good in her life once, even before this place let her unleash her bloodthirst. For once, he held himself in check for a reason that wasn’t stopping himself from killing someone who might return the favor. 

“I have others, but this one was their favorite. Always. Until they … ” 

She trailed off. He slid the hammer into a strap on his coveralls and turned the door on its edge, watching her. Her smile had faded, but he couldn’t discern her expression. _Little ones_ was a strange word to use; he would have assumed her children, but why not say that? It was probably a lot more complicated than he cared to dig into. 

But he still waited for her to finish. 

She shook her head, dislodging old memories, and turned back to him. Her fingers shifted around the metal, suddenly holding it like it could be a weapon if she threw it hard enough. 

“Why yours?” 

He’d expected the turnaround on that, and shrugged. The carved bone, the broken grin … there had never been a reason for any of it. The Entity had provided the means, and all the rest had been whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. 

“Scares the shit out of the meat.” 

“Truly?” 

“They need to stay scared.” He pushed himself up, pulling the door with him as he stood. “They see another person, that’s not gonna do the trick.” 

She was silent at that, her eyes fixed on him as he made his way back into the darkness toward the workshop. It was true. They didn’t all wear masks, but those that did had something more to hide. She wore half a mask, at least. He had his. Sally kept her face hidden. The rest - Max was disfigured, and the Entity had given Philip a sort of disguise, and Carter … whatever the hell Carter had done to himself, he might have _needed_ a mask, but at the end of the day even Evan would admit the prick could scare the survivors at least as well as he could. And the new guy, he wore facepaint, didn’t he? That was its own sort of mask. 

Hidden, to keep them the monsters to the prey they hunted. To make sure their fragmented humanity didn’t strike a chord with the survivors. Evan had no problem with it. He’d left that all behind when things finally ended. 

It didn’t take long to fix the door back in place and make sure the lock worked. His forge glowed dully in the darkness; he’d let the coals run down once he’d finished fixing the bands for the door, and the whole room was mostly shadows and orange light. All his tools were rusty or bloody or so worn down the light didn’t shine off them, but it did glint on the edge of one of the hatchets still sitting on his workbench, sharpened to a deadly point by careful hands. 

He was still for a moment. Thoughts raged in his skull. 

Then he grabbed it and stalked back out into the forest. She watched him appear, and he saw her head move to fix her gaze on the hatchet. Evan tossed it underhand toward her. She caught it easily, barely even moving from where she was crouched. 

“Another repayment?” she asked, almost smiling again, fingers running over the handle and the blade as if to check for any damage he’d inflicted. 

“For not trying to kill me this time,” he offered. 

This time, the smile widened into something genuine, not sharp or mocking or dangerous. She slid the hatchet back into her belt and stood up. 

“Then perhaps next time I will refrain again.” 

The sliver of iron dropped out of her fingers and disappeared in the dying grass. Still smiling, Anna turned and walked into the forest, and this time, he could see her for a lot longer than before.

Evan watched until she’d fully disappeared from sight. 

* * *

  
At some point he asked Philip _what the hell did you mean by kinship?_

And Philip said, _I told you. You are both hunters. She matches you in strength. She has done what you never thought possible, and you have done what she could not have imagined. Neither of you has killed the other despite trying to do so often. You’ve found kinship unlike whatever else you’ve found with anyone here._

Which bothered him. It wasn’t wrong, no. He and Philip were acquaintances at best. They weren’t supposed to be _friends_ here. But that wasn’t the word he’d used. _Kinship._ And Carter’s incredibly frustrating suggestion of _fondness_ , which Evan wanted to dismiss out of hand but it just kept lingering, clinging to the edges of his thoughts like a victim on a hook. 

Kinship. Like family. The only family he’d ever really known was his father, and nobody could live up to that. His mother had died too early on for him to remember her clearly, and his time in the fog hadn’t done his memory any favors. The best he could manage to get a grip on was a faint feeling of warmth. Of something like comfort in the wake of pain and fear. 

The chaos in his head wasn’t as wild and violent as it had been, but there was still plenty around to piss him off. 

There were no more attempts to break into his workshop. No more closed traps, no more axes coming at his throat or chest. He didn’t see very much of her at all, in fact, and only the feeling of her forest - ancient, hungry, and above all _cold_ \- in the fog told him she was still around. She was probably busy with her own shit, he figured. Too many trials, keeping her mind fixated on the bloodlust. Too much upkeep, her home falling apart as much as his did, forcing her to keep things put together or risk having nothing. If a place like that _could_ fall apart. Maybe it just got overgrown. 

He thought he saw her on his property from time to time, a flickering shadow in the trees, but she didn’t approach again, and he didn’t follow if he thought he saw her. There was enough for _him_ to do that it wasn’t worth the time to try and deal with her again, especially if she was going to give him space instead of harassing him for the last hatchet. 

A trial passed where one of the survivors lodged a broken chunk of metal almost in his throat. It dug in, burned like hell, let two of them escape while he dragged it out of his flesh and made his way to the door they’d bolted for. Two out of four wasn’t the worst he could have done, but for him, it wasn’t allowed. 

The wound didn’t heal when he got back to the estate. It bled, slowly and pointedly, the Entity making its displeasure known. He looked at it in a broken mirror, the only one left in the house; it was nasty enough that he knew he’d have to treat it, or risk going into a trial with an open wound, and - 

He’d need help. He probably _could_ have managed to stitch it up on his own, but it’d be awkward and badly done. Someone else could do a lot better job. 

Sally was his best bet. She might have been so far away from their shared nightmare reality it was difficult to even talk to her, but injuries drew her back like a moth to a flame. Some part of her was still half in the world she’d lived in, and still remembered what her life had been. 

But she wasn’t there when he stalked to the burned-out husk of the asylum she lived in. He couldn’t find her, couldn’t hear her sighing or screaming in the distance. Trial, probably. _Damn._ For a few seconds he considered waiting, but the pulse of the pain in his neck drove him to different measures. 

Anna flickered in his mind. She wasn’t a healer by any stretch, but she had to have dealt with injuries as a hunter. Had to know the bare minimum of first aid, if nothing else. 

So he took a different path in the fog. 

She opened the door before he even got to it. She stared at him, and then her eyes landed on the bloody wound. 

“Another fight?” she asked, smirking very slightly. 

“Survivor,” he said, trying not to snarl. “Need some help.” 

Her smirk faded, and she stepped aside. 

The inside of her house wasn’t much warmer than the outside, but the glowing light from the candles and the fireplace made it feel like it was. She gestured to a chair at the table dominating the center of the room. He sat down and took the opportunity to look around. 

Half logs, tied together by rope and cemented by years of the forest trying to reclaim what had once been its own property, and half boards, though plenty of them looked like they’d been hewn and never finished. An upper floor, or at least an upper balcony. Above him was a chandelier made entirely out of antlers, candles set on the widest parts. 

Somehow, he’d expected more trophies. Elk heads on the walls, a bear skin on the floor. But maybe she had a more sensible approach to that kind of thing, and actually used the pieces instead of just showing them off. 

Anna disappeared into the shadows and reappeared moments later with a small bag. She dumped it out onto the table - a bone needle, a worn skein of slightly thicker thread than he was used to - and examined his injury. 

“They were desperate, to stab so deep,” she said. Not a question of why it wasn’t healing, or what he’d missed to get attacked. A part of him calmed down. 

“They always are.” He watched her thread the needle. “Bad luck they hit a soft spot.” 

There was another flicker of a smirk. 

“Since you have so few,” she said, and before he could answer she turned away again. 

It was to grab a bucket and a damp cloth. Evan was silent as she wiped away the blood, not flinching as the torn skin and muscle stung with fresh new pain. He stayed silent as she picked up the needle again and started to stitch the wound up. It wasn’t ideal; she wasn’t trained in it, didn’t have the skill Sally did. But she was certain, and she pulled the ragged edges of his skin together well enough to do the trick. Eventually the bleeding would stop, and things would knit back together again. 

And he’d have to yank the stitches out himself. This was hand-spun thread, not whatever Sally had access to. But he’d deal with that problem later. 

“You build this place?” he asked as he felt her finish stitching. 

“No.” There was a tug, and the thread snapped; she rolled up what was left and put everything back in the bag. “I maintain it, as best I can.” 

“Don’t we all,” he muttered. She gave him a sidelong glance. This close, he noticed the veil on the back of her mask. Even when she was trying to split his chest in half he’d thought it was a trail granted by the Entity, but no, it was lace, fixed to the edges. “Looks sturdy.” 

“It was built to withstand true winters.” Anna tucked the bag away and went to feed another log into the fireplace. “And worse things.” 

It wasn’t much of a jump to know what she meant by _worse things_. He fell silent again, eyeing the antlers above him, the balcony around the edge of the room. There was a bed, too, tucked into a far corner, probably as unused as his own. 

The pain in his neck ebbed but didn’t fade just yet. It’d take a while, and if he was really unlucky he’d end up back in a trial before it fixed itself fully - but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d put up with that, and he’d know the little shits would be aiming for it. 

Thoughts faded into the background noise of his head as he watched her tend the fire with her bare hands and stare into the flames. No questions - no serious questions - and no spite. She’d let him in and helped him without a word otherwise. Parts of his brain that had spent decades rotting in his madness were trying to get a word in, but there was only so much of him left to listen. Still, some things managed to make their way through. 

Without a word he stood and strode out of her house. She didn’t follow; he didn’t hear footsteps in the grass after him, but he didn’t hear the door slam, either. He headed back through the fog, back to his property, back to the workshop. 

She didn’t seem surprised to see him again so soon when he stopped at her door, but her eyes dropped to the hatchet in his hand with a dangerous intensity. It was the last one. It was about as close to a thank-you as he was capable of getting. 

Evan offered it, and Anna took it. Her fingers brushed his as she wrapped them around the handle. She was cold to the touch, but that was probably more him than her; in the fog, he ran hot, the rage inside him and a lifetime of working in deep, dark heat fusing into a constant run ten or twenty degrees above normal. 

She noticed it. He thought he saw a flicker in her eyes, and then her other hand came up to close around his on the handle. They both paused. It might have surprised her, acting like that without thinking. It sure as hell surprised _him_. Outside of a fight or carrying a survivor in a trial, this was the closest anyone had gotten to him in the fog. 

Neither one of them spoke, but she didn’t take her hand away - and neither did he. 

“I … did not think you would give this one back,” she said, after what was probably a few seconds but felt a lot longer. 

“No point in keeping it.” Not totally true, but at this point, it’d be almost totally pointless to hold on to it. “Don’t need you breakin’ in again.” 

She laughed, low and quiet. 

“Have I not held back?” 

“Figure eventually you’d get mad enough to try again.” The scar on his chest prickled at the thought. “Or at least try to cut me in half.” 

“That would take too long.” He felt her fingers curl against his slightly, her cold leeching his perpetual warmth. “Taking your head off would be faster.” 

“Is that what you were tryin’ to do the first few times?” 

“Your head or your throat.” She looked at him, that slight, almost-friendly edge of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “You fixed your mask.” 

He stared at her for a second before the memory lit up. One of those early fights, where her hatchet had taken a piece out. Once she’d run, he’d barely even thought about it, but - 

“Wasn’t me.” The implication: that the Entity had allowed that repair to happen on its own. The masks were, unsurprisingly, difficult to repair. For her paper would be hard to come by. For him, bone might have been in ready supply, but it was impossible to fix a mask like his. He’d have to make a whole new one, which wasn’t much of a positive experience. 

Except on the few occasions he’d carved out a new one because the mood struck him. 

“Some things do their own work,” he added. 

“If we do well enough,” she replied, and the smile edged up into a smirk briefly. His neck throbbed; Evan scowled under the mask, and loosened his grip on the hatchet. 

“‘S how it goes.” 

She took the hatchet from him and slid it back into her belt. Now they were all there again, looking less dangerous now than they had before. Maybe it was the more even lighting, the moon overhead obscured by clouds and mist more than they were back on his property; maybe it was because he’d seen what they could do in her hands instead of having to wonder. Maybe it was because they didn’t have his blood all over them. 

For a few long moments he hesitated. She watched him, her mouth faintly curved, her eyes black and bright behind her mask. Words were not his strong suit, and never had been; why speak when a punch or a stab did the trick twice as fast? But somehow the silence dragged at him now, where it never had before. 

He broke it with a nod, not a word, and turned to leave again. He didn’t look back to see if she was following or even watching him, but he never heard the door to her cabin shut. 

The chill of her fingers lingered on his skin for a while.  
  


* * *

  
She did come to his house, eventually. 

He was out on the porch, fixing a banister that had rotted to the point of disintegrating when he put a hand on it, when he saw her out in the trees. The area around the estate house he trapped a lot more thoroughly than the edges of the fog. It probably wasn’t a great idea - it suggested he had something to hide, which he didn’t, really - but he’d be damned if he just left the place unguarded. 

She was unarmed for once. Not fully unarmed, of course. He could see the hatchets in her belt. But the broadaxe she always had with her wasn’t there, and that kept his attention for a few seconds longer than it normally would have. 

Carefully, with silent steps, Anna picked her way through the trees and rocks and inconspicuous traps without so much as a pause. She avoided the obvious ones, stepped around the hidden ones, and took one long, certain step over one that was tar-blackened and hidden just on the edge of the most obvious path up to the porch. She didn’t even brush any of them. In another life, he might have applauded. 

She stopped at the foot of the short stairs to the porch, and didn’t set foot on them until he gestured with a hammer. She wasn’t a threat anymo - no, that was a lie, she was _absolutely_ still a threat, and always would be. But she wasn’t an immediate threat. He could turn his back to her. 

It was a luxury he was rarely afforded. 

“Bored?” he asked. She smiled briefly, like a flash of lightning. 

“It has been a while since we spoke.” Anna settled back against the wall of the house, testing it carefully to make sure the boards wouldn’t give, something he noted with a hint of satisfaction. “Things are not so much … fun, without you trying to stop me.” 

“Not hard to start up again,” he said, and immediately regretted it. But she only shook her head. 

“Without these to spur us, it would not be the same.” Fingers brushed her hatchets. “Perhaps we can fight another time.” 

Evan shrugged. Trials were about enough to satisfy him, but a throwdown outside one wouldn’t be a problem - until she took his head off his shoulders. 

“I spoke with the new arrival,” she said, and he noted a very distinct growl to her voice. 

“Don’t like him?” 

“He is - ” She struggled to find the right word, or maybe just the right language. “Unpleasant.” 

“Kind way to put it.” 

Evan hadn’t personally spoken to him, and didn’t plan on it if he could help it, but aside from telling him the guy was from a circus Philip had let him know later he was the sort to use drugs. Strong enough, and deadly enough, or else he wouldn’t be here, but the addition of something like _that_ grated on Evan. It suggested weakness. Or - 

“Debauched,” she said, though she didn’t sound confident about it. “He uses herbs to weaken his prey. He tortures for his own pleasure. Not simply to kill.” 

Evan, a man known for wholly unnecessary brutality, said nothing. 

“He is greedy. Unnecessary. And he called himself a _hunter_ when I told him of my skills.” The growl in her voice was a snarl now. He glanced over and saw bared teeth, without so much as a hint of a smile to suggest a human intent. 

He almost said _we’re all hunters here_ , but in the interest of not having her turn on him he kept it to himself. He didn’t doubt what she said. She didn’t have a reason to lie. And he didn’t think she would regardless. Animals were honest by nature, and she was closer to them than he’d ever seen someone get. 

“I showed him he was wrong.” 

“Kill him?” 

“No. I proved what a true hunter does.” 

Evan felt a smirk pull at the edge of his mouth, and slotted the last piece of the banister into place. 

“You talk to any of the others much?” he asked. Her snarl faded. Slowly. 

“Sometimes. When they wish to speak.” 

“Ever run into Carter?” He glanced over; she looked at him, her expression flat. “Herman. The doctor. Always got sparks coming off him.” 

“Oh. Yes.” A part of him felt a sting of satisfaction as her mouth twisted. “He talks too much.” 

“Couldn’t shut him up to save his own life. He’s a torturer, too.” 

“He seemed arrogant.” 

“Puttin’ it lightly.” He wondered what she’d think of him if she found out what kind of torturer he was. If she’d _show_ him what it meant to be a hunter. On the other hand, he’d probably never imply he was a hunter, which meant she’d wouldn’t have an insult to respond to. 

He felt a twinge of curiosity - real curiosity, this time. She was staring out into the forest, her expression grim, her thoughts somewhere else, or at least on someone else. 

“You talk to the others at all?” he asked. She glanced his way, then looked back at the trees. 

“Some.” 

Evan waited, but she didn’t elaborate. Silence lingered for a few more moments before he heard her shift, the porch’s aging floorboards creaking under her feet. 

“I prefer your company. You understand, I think.” 

He paused, and glanced over at her. She was watching him intently. 

“Understand what?” he asked, already knowing the answer. 

“The wild. The hunt. The true joy in what we must do.” Anna smiled, and while it wasn’t exactly a friendly smile, it wasn’t threatening, either. “And you are a strong opponent.” 

He pushed himself up and faced her, crossing his arms over his chest. Partly it was just a stance; partly it was to try and not remind either of them of the almost-deathblow she’d dealt to him before.

“Hell of a compliment to give,” he said dryly. 

Anna pushed away from the wall and crossed the porch until she was as close as she’d been the last time. This time he had nothing to give her. If anyone was going to close the last distance, it would have to be her - 

She reached up, a finger trailing up along the edge of his mask to the place where it left his jaw exposed. The cool touch froze him briefly, but despite every alarm in his head going off at full blast, he stayed put. 

“Bone,” she said, her thumb grazing the surface of the mask. “Human.” 

“I’m impressed you can tell by touch.” 

“Did you take it from _them_?” 

“No.” He paused and reconsidered. “Not personally.” 

There was a little pressure as she pushed down, feeling the places where smooth bone had splintered, where blood had dried on, where the gap for the mouth gave way to jagged protrusions that looked like teeth. 

“My mother once told me that a mask may hide one face, but reveal another.” The rest of her fingers rested on his throat, just lightly enough that he didn’t grab at her hand. “The true one.” 

Evan was silent. For once, the rage that rose in the wake of any kind of assumption about his nature by a relative stranger was muted. 

“I never understood it. A mask is only a mask. I am no shy creature in the grass.” He felt her fingers curl, so gently, resting on the edge of the bone. The whole thing was held in place by wire and leather, bound around the rounded piece at the back to keep them from cutting into his skull, so it was impossible to pull directly off - but to slide it up was a simpler matter. “But here … was she right?” 

There was no movement. After a moment, Evan reached up and wrapped his hand around Anna’s wrist more gently than he’d handled anything in his life. Even here, in a forest so much less cold than hers, she felt chilled. 

“Another time,” he said. 

The pressure on his face lifted, but her expression stayed the same - slightly curious, a little intent, and as he watched, he saw the edge of a smile again. 

“Then tell me,” she murmured. “Do I see your true face? Or simply a disguise to frighten children?” 

He didn’t let go. She didn’t try to pull her arm free. Both of them knew she could take his arm off at the elbow, and that he could wrench hers out of the socket with barely a grunt of effort. 

Evan considered his response. He felt her fingers grazed the edge of his mask again, more an idle movement than a real threat. 

“Stick around a while,” he said eventually, a faint smirk of his own just visible under the slashed grin in his mask. “You might find out.”


End file.
